[color=yellow]The anthems It has become a fully established club tradition that in the build up to games at the Camp Nou, the club anthem, called ‘El Cant del Barça' is played on the stadium loudspeaker system, and all the fans sing along in unison. It was first performed on November 27, 1974, before the game that marked the end of the 75th anniversary celebrations. A choir of 3,600, conducted by Oriol Martorell, gathered on the pitch for the very first public performance of the new anthem. The words were written by Josep Maria Espinàs and Jaume Picas, and the music was composed by Manuel Valls. The song quickly grew in popularity. The fans loved the fact that they could clap their hands in time to its catchy rhythm, and the words perfectly depicted the values of supporting Barça, especially the spirit of welcoming outsiders into Catalan society, a spirit that is reflected all the way through the club membership. However, this is not the only anthem the club has had over the years. The first was unveiled on February 18, 1923, with words by Rafael Folch i Capdevila and music by Enric Morera. It was performed by the Orfeó Gracienc choir, for the first time at the old Les Corts stadium as part of Catalan football tribute to Joan Gamper. In keeping with the grandiloquent mood of the times, the words described the relationship between “sport and the Catalan nation ”. Anthem 1923 Later, on occasion of the 50th anniversary, Esteve Calzada wrote the words for a new anthem, which was set to music by Joan Dotras. It was called 'Barcelona, sempre amunt!' (‘Always up with Barcelona!), and despite the political climate of the period, it was written in Catalan. Anthem 1949 Josep Badia, in 1957, also used Catalan in the words to a third anthem, 'Himne a l’Estadi' (Anthem for the Stadium’), for the inauguration of the Camp Nou. This was the first time that the word 'Barça' appeared in a club anthem, for which the music was composed by Adolf Cabané. Anthem 1957

‘El Cant del Barça' has been so successful that all the previous anthems were soon forgotten, even 'Himne de l’Estadi', which was the official tune in 1974. And it has now become such a part of club tradition that 30m years later, nobody could possibly imagine there to be any need for a new anthem. An anthem was written for the Club Centenary, called 'Cant del Centenari', first performed on September 22, 1998, with words by Ramon Solsona and music by Antoni Ros Marbà, but it was made clear from the start that the song was only going to be used within the context of those

celebrations.

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The colours One of the most distinctive elements of FC Barcelona are the colours the players wear. Scarlet and blue have featured on the club shirt for more than one hundred years and the club is widely known as the ‘Blaugrana’ in reference to the names of these colours in the Catalan language. However, although the shirt has remained relatively constant in design over the years, the team shorts were white for the first ten years of club history, then switched to black, and were only blue from the 1920s onwards.

Nut just why Barça originally chose to wear these shirt colours has been matter of much debate among club historians, and although several theories have been put forward, nobody has ever managed to provide substantial evidence that the colours were chosen for any symbolic reason. Naturally, most of the theories are related to the foundation and origins of the club. For instance, it was claimed for several years that the Barça colours were adopted from a Swiss club that Gamper had founded earlier in his life, or that they were the colours of the Swiss canton that the founder was from. We now know that these hypotheses are highly unlikely to be true.

There is another common but unproven theory that the founders based their choice on the colours of the blue and red accountancy pencils that were so popular at the time. And there are other more prosaic suggestions, for instance the one which maintains that the mother of the Comamala brothers supplied the players with red and blue sashes so that they could differentiate between each other in the days before they had a kit of their own. But, as stated earlier, none of these theories have ever managed to offer conclusive evidence of why it was that Barça used these colours from its very earliest days. But what can be sure is that the Barça shirt has gone on to be one of the most recognisable and enigmatic shirt designs in world football.